Quilting is a special art in the general field of sewing in which patterns are stitched through a plurality of layers of material over a two dimensional area of the material. The multiple layers of material normally include at least three layers, one a woven primary or facing sheet that will have a decorative finished quality, one a usually woven backing sheet that may or may not be of a finished quality, and one or more internal layers of thick filler material, usually of randomly oriented fibers. The stitched patterns maintain the physical relationship of the layers of material to each other as well as provide ornamental qualities. In quilting, two different approaches are generally used.
Single needle quilters of the type illustrated and described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/497,727, filed Jun. 30, 1995 U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,916 and entitled Quilting Method and Apparatus and those patents cited and otherwise referred to therein are customarily used for the stitching of most comforters, some bedspreads and other products from preformed or precut rectangular panels. Some single needle quilters are used to quilt patterns on fabric that carries a pre-woven or printed pattern, with the quilting adding to or enhancing the appearance of the pattern. Such quilters require that pre-patterned material be manually positioned in the quilting apparatus so that the quilting can be registered with the pre applied pattern or a complicated visual positioning system be used. With such systems, border quilting or coarse pattern quilting can be achieved but high quality outline quilting around the pre applied patterns or the quilting of pattern details of a fraction of an inch in scale are difficult to achieve. Single needle quilters are usually lock stitch machines.
Multiple needle quilters of the type illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,154,130 are customarily used for the stitching of mattress covers, some bedspreads and other such products which are commonly formed from multi-layered web fed material. These multi-needle quilters include banks of mechanically ganged needles that sew multiple copies of a recurring pattern on the fabric. With such multi-needle machines, the combining of quilting with pre-applied printed or woven patterns in the fabric which would require registration of the quilting with the pre-applied patterns is usually not attempted. Multi-needle quilters are usually chain stitch machines.
Another quilting apparatus employing some of the characteristics of both single needle panel type quilters and web fed multi-needle quilters is that disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/831,060 to Jeff Kaetterhenry, et al. and entitled Web-fed Chain-stitch Single-needle Mattress Cover Quilter with Needle Deflection Compensation. Such a machine uses one or more separately controllable single needle heads that apply chain stitches to panels or webs.
The outer layer of material used for mattress covers, often referred to as ticking, is supplied in a variety of colors and preprinted or dyed patterns. Generally, mattress manufacturers who are the customers of the quilted mattress cover manufacturers or quilting machinery manufacturers require a wide variety of ticking material patterns to produce a variety of bedding products. Frequently, small quantities of each of the variety of products must be made to supply their customers' requirements, requiring the maintenance of inventories of a large number of different patterns of ticking material, which involves substantial cost. Further, the need to constantly change ticking supply rolls when manufacturing such a variety of products in small quantities is a major factor in reducing throughput of the mattress making process and delaying production. This problem exists in the manufacture of bedspreads, comforters and other quilted products where a variety of products in small quantities is desired.
There exists a need in mattress cover manufacturing for a capability of efficiently producing small quantities of quilted fabric such as mattress covers, comforters, bedspreads and the like where different pre-applied patterns on the product are desired to be enhanced by combining the pre-applied and quilted patterns, particularly where combinations of quilted patterns and printed or other pre-applied patterns must vary with each or every few products.